Home Care Workers Could Soon See a Major Raise In Their Wages

Two million American workers take care of other people with infirmities—frailties of old age, disabilities from injury or illness and other limitations that decades ago might have put them in an institution. But now many more of them are likely to be tended at home, and home care givers make up one of the fastest growing occupations in the country. Caregivers have long worked in limbo, however, with their rights ill-defined, their pay low, their industry in flux and their work underappreciated.

A District of Columbia Appellate Court took one big legal step towards improving the lot of home care workers on August 21 by upholding a decision by the Department of Labor that home care workers employed by third-party providers, whether public, non-profit or for-profit, are covered under federal wage and overtime rules.